[5] On April 12, 1907, he wed Marion Margery (Warren) Scranton, who went on to become a suffragist and leading member of the Republican Party in the United States.

His daughters went on to attend Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts while his son, William, who was born at a cottage in Madison, Connecticut while the family was vacationing there in 1917,[8] graduated from Yale Law School before securing a position with the U.S. State Department in 1959 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

According to The Plain Speaker, at the time of the foundation's creation, "his wife made it clear it was named after the city, not the donors.

Hospitalized in West Palm Beach, Florida on Friday, February 11, 1955, he died there two days later.

Following funeral services on February 17 at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Scranton, he was buried at the Dunmore Cemetery in Lackawanna County.